With the increasing use of wireless communications, usage regulation has surfaced as a primary concern. Service providers commonly charge a usage fee that can increase when a user exceeds a certain allotted number of minutes included in a calling plan. These fee increases can be disproportionally high compared to the base price of the calling plan.
While a single user might be able to monitor the usage on his or her own personal mobile telephone, many service providers now offer shared plans wherein multiple users operate multiple phones, all linked to a single account. Further, with many of these plans, a certain number of allotted minutes are shared by all the users. For example, parents might participate in a shared family-type plan and provide mobile telephones to each of their children.
A problem with such a system is, with each user operating independently of other users, that control over usage may be lost and over-use charges might be incurred for exceeding the overall allotted minutes for the plan. These over-use charges can be exorbitantly high.
Therefore, techniques for monitoring usage in such shared plans would be beneficial.